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Kid_Kyoto wrote:

plastictrees wrote:

Kid_Kyoto wrote:
I'm not blown away but I can live with them. I mean really, guys, have you ever given the Catachans or Cadians a good look? These might not be great but they're miles ahead of Rambo or the Football helmets.

Except not at all. Even if you hate the look of the Catachans and Cadians, they're still clearly better sculpted models. In what way are the WFG "miles ahead" other than attempting to pull of a look that you happen to find more interesting.

The Cadians are well done but just visually uninteresting. And Catachans are better sculpted? really?

They're ridiculous, but they're clearly better sculpted. The Catachans manage to stick to the same scale within their own sprue for a start. Even the stiff legged leering drunk Catachan has a certain level of detail that these saggy blobs are lacking.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

SkaerKrow wrote:

plastictrees wrote:I understand that they're cheap, and that's great, but why are people so adamant in supporting these guys? Did they get a production discount if their miniatures were awful? Give your money to someone doing something good, don't reward the barely acceptable just because there are no other alternatives.

Don't come here bashing other people for their opinions while placing your own on a pedestal. You think they're terrible and that's fine, but that doesn't mean that the figures are inarguably bad by any stretch.

Is there another part of the forum where I am allowed to do that?
This isn't fine art appreciation. There's only a certain amount of subjectivity that can be employed here. They are a very poor demonstration of the craft of model sculpting. If you like the product, hurray for you, I'm sure your army of these guys will look great on the table. As individuals, close up, they are of unequivocally poor quality.

How'd I manage to miss the HW pic and the box art?

I'll give kudos to WGF for getting back to the basic trooper look (I rather liked the original trooper design and was fairly active on the WGF forums during it's inception) and improving the position for the gunner. The new pose has lots of possibilities for a gunner leaning against a wall, or sitting on sandbag. Unfortunately, I don't see the new sitting pose as working for a Missile launcher or mortar.

However, the gun is just terrible. Who in the heck thought that the weapons of the future would be a minifridge with a tripod and a barrel sticking out the side! Perhaps they need a place to keep their cola's cold?

As always, I reserve final judgement for the actual product and maybe the final result will convince me. However, all these pics do is make me really glad I held off on investing in the shocktroops and bought a platoon of old Shockforce Not-IG instead.

EDIT: Just saw the pics of sprues and final figs.
Bad
-Commander arms are territble. Like they can't decide whether they're a blouse or musculature. Just plain bad sculpting
-Laser and Minigun are not well done. Even if you liked the twin barrels, the sculpting on them is very soft.
-Commander heads are just badly done
-8 figs for 20 bucks isn't a great deal compared to their earlier releases, even with the extra bits and HW's.

Good
-Better variation of legs for firers
-Missile launcher and mortar are good looking sculpts
-Commander Torsos are nice and the long coats aren't terribly bad.


Conclusion, most of the Bads could be fixed by
-Splicing commander hands/forearms onto Shock Trooper arms
-Buying some Pig Iron heads to replace the bad commander heads
-Replacing the minigun and laser with Heavy weapons from any of the many aftermarket companies out there.

In the end you'd have a pretty good force for not alot of $. I like converting and modding and with the adjustments listed above I'd be proud to put it on the table. Strait from the box however, they have unacceptable (to me) flaws and are not up to my standards.

I don't hate them, I think they look ok with the exception of the KFC Bucket Hat.

I think they're good enough. The officers remind me of this guy http://romanticallyapocalyptic.com/31

lord_blackfang wrote:I think they're good enough. The officers remind me of this guy http://romanticallyapocalyptic.com/31

Wow, I've never seen that comic before. Absolutely Brilliant!

That comic is awesome

Love the art style and sense of humour.

plastictrees wrote:

biccat wrote:Probably gonna get flamed for this...but the detail on the clothing is much better on these models than on the current Imperial Guardsmen.

The proportions of the models and their helmets really is a killer tho.

I don't see why you'd get flamed for expressing your opinion (haha, what am I saying). I do think you're completely wrong though. The folds and hang of the WFG models has a pretty tenuous basis in reality, as though the sculptor had clothes described to him or had one photo of a women in a dress from which to extrapolate all his information on the way cloth works.

I'm curious as to which elements you think are done better.

The greatcoats on the officers, pants on the soldiers, and particularly the hat of the officer holding the Katana.

Although I suppose if you're used to the appearance of GW's figures and their "a crease here, a fold there" IG troops, you might find these unusual. It's like when people post pictures of appropriately scaled humans not having the GW gorilla features. Lots of people think they look weird.

biccat wrote:

plastictrees wrote:
I'm curious as to which elements you think are done better.

The greatcoats on the officers, pants on the soldiers, and particularly the hat of the officer holding the Katana.

I'm a fraid I disagree with you on most counts. The pants on the soldiers may be comparable but...

-The officer's cap is not well proportioned to the head, especially if you're looking at it as being less-heroic. Considering the head is enclosed in a mask, picture the unmasked head with the cap on top. It's more oversized than the worst of the giant soviet officer's caps.

-The Officer greatcoats are niether realistically sculpted, or effectively heroicly sculpted. The one with the fur collar isn't bad, but the one matched with the French Foreign Legion cap (another terrible hat) flows like a lightweight bathrobe. Further, the sleeves on the officer's greatcoats are a bad mix of a lightweight woman's blouse, and overblown arm musculature.

It's fair enough if you prefer the style of the sculpting of the greatcoats, but from all the pictures I've seen the quality, cleanliness and amount of detail on the greatcoats is not an improvement over the Cadians.

Agreed with those points, quality wise the greatcoats are far from exceeding what GW has done years ago

More info I suppose

Wargames Factory is pleased to announce the first expansion to their Alien Suns Range – Shock Trooper Heavy Weapons Teams. Sprue and production models preview.
Product specs are:

Retail $19.95
Set contains 3-Heavy Weapons Sprues and Crews (6-figures and weapons) plus 1-Officer Sprue (2-figures).
There are a variety of heads and other options plus loads of extra heavy weapons.
Figures are 28mm and compatible with many popular sci-fi wargames
There are 4-different weapons that can be made from this set including:
Heavy Energy Cannon
Dual Multi-Bareled Chan Gun
Mortar
Anti-Tank Rocket Launcher
Availability – mid to late-September 2011

I was just going to say that they weren't much less than Cadian HW's, but then I checked the price of Cadian HW Squads. 38 bucks for 3!

At that comparison, you could throw out the officers (by far the weakest figs in the set), and only use the Mortars and ML's and it would still be a pretty great deal!

Just to assuage comments posted earlier in this thread: Sitting behind the weapon is standard for heavy machineguns when they are mounted on a tripod. I was an infantryman for 4 years and my specialty was the M240, M2, and Mk19 Heavy Machineguns. So, the WGF minis seated behind their weapons would work if the guns were man-portable.

The reason for this practice is recoil and control. When firing these big guns, even if they are supported by a tripod, the rounds have a tendency to be off target. By pressing ones feet down on the legs of the tripod, a machinegunner can get a more controlled burst of fire and be on-target more often. This practice enhances the killing power of the aforementioned weapons.

As for the models, I think they could work if Cadian parts were used. I like my IG to look cohesive but converted, adding my own flavor to 40K armies is the only way I'll roll. I'm in agreement with most of the commens about the officers. Pig Iron heads and Cadian parts are the only way to go here, the sculpts are sub-par. Although, its refreshing WGF is making these minis as I always wanted to see Greatcoat Guard.

Baby's first heavy weapon.

The Mad Tanker wrote:Baby's first heavy weapon.

ENTIRE TEAM IZ BABIES!

Not impressed. Then again I only used the bodies from the frst set and added Cadian arms/weapons/kit and Pig Iron heads to make some Cadians w/ great coats...

I'm having a feeling the negative comments get deleted from the site. That's why there's no negative feedback, the "webmaster" must approve all posts.

That's not actual feedback, it's tailored feedback.

Don't like your models, or your website, good luck down the road with something that doesn't look like I pulled it out of the $2 bin at Kmart.

Kreedos wrote:I'm having a feeling the negative comments get deleted from the site. That's why there's no negative feedback, the "webmaster" must approve all posts.

That's not actual feedback, it's tailored feedback.

Yea this is likely true. You'd be surprised at the amount of deleted posts on the forums. Also they have a facebook page, I bet everything there is also filtered. Now they dont go on a super censoring rampaging spree (there is still quite a lot of constructive criticism on their forums last i checked) But lets just say that if half of these dakka posts were submitted, I probably wouldnt see a lot

Kreedos wrote:I'm having a feeling the negative comments get deleted from the site. That's why there's no negative feedback, the "webmaster" must approve all posts.

That's not actual feedback, it's tailored feedback.

Don't like your models, or your website, good luck down the road with something that doesn't look like I pulled it out of the $2 bin at Kmart.

I wouldn't be surprised. Uhg, and that company has so much potential. The ability to put out cheap, decent casting quality sprues of plastic, based on any concept and image that their 3d artists can come up with? I'd kill to have their resources!

Hm, looks like I missed these (being out of the country). Yeah, can't really add anything other than the same feeling of tremendous lost potential. The 3d designers at WGF do not appear to have enough experience with their craft since the cloth details seem to consistently give them problems.

Seeing the sprues, I think they're OK... not worth quite all the hate they seem to have received here, but not specatcular... certainly passable to blend in with their other models and add heavy weapons.

RiTides wrote:Seeing the sprues, I think they're OK... not worth quite all the hate they seem to have received here, but not specatcular... certainly passable to blend in with their other models and add heavy weapons.

I agree, it's a fine way to add heavy weapons. It's the officers that I think completely missed the mark.

They've gone a long way from being a company that actively sought wishlists to one that just throws a more or less finished product down and says deal with it. The original greatcoats did have some semblance of design input from the potential customer base; these just appeared one day and the initial renders were roundly condemned.
If the new "sculptor" has a better understanding of human anatomy than the previous one as their website crudely claims, it's not apparent in this set.

I think its now for sale

http://www.wargamesfactory.com/webstore/alien-suns/shock-troop-heavy-weapons-1

Whos gonna be the brave soul to buy a set and review it?

Wait... That is the only pic of the model WGF have of the team on the site, not the best paintjob I have ever seen tbh!

Still. at $20 CAD, what do you expect?

EDIT: Make that $20 USD

Commander Cain wrote:Wait... That is the only pic of the model WGF have of the team on the site, not the best paintjob I have ever seen tbh!

WGF has a low budget methinks when it comes to painters. I mean sure its not going to be GW quality but other companies have some decent folks

Wow, that paintjob somehow makes the models look even worse. I am impressed that they managed to do that.

Hey, bad paint jobs in official minis are good... I mean, you buy them, paint them, and your miniatures will look better than the ones in display: you are a great painter

I just got my box in the mail last week and I have to say I'm really pleased with the whole thing. People talk alot about the "quality" of the minis, but for me any substitute that's 1/2 the price but 80% as good is a win. The nice thing is the amount of options on each sprue. If you don't like the new Darth Vader heads there are two of the original heads to use. The sitting legs look much improved over the original 3D renders, though are still a bit strange. Good news is the kneeling legs are well done and the weapons look good too imo. The officer sprue is a real bonus though. I was looking for something to make some commissars and these will do nicely. Swap in some imperial looking weapons and poof! ready. Oh, and another nice thing is NO bases on their feet to cut off.

So if you're interested I can recommend them. I was a little late to the party and started an army of the shock troops this summer ... so these came out just in time for me. For the first two squads I used a mix of Imperial guard parts, but now at least there is an option that looks like the rest of the army.

SauceCaptain wrote:
So if you're interested I can recommend them. I was a little late to the party and started an army of the shock troops this summer ... so these came out just in time for me. For the first two squads I used a mix of Imperial guard parts, but now at least there is an option that looks like the rest of the army.

Good to hear from someone who has them. Could you post some comparison next to GW figs? I'd really like to see how they look side by side.